The importance of political identification in translation publication : an example from translation of the Soviet laws in China

incl. ref.

Political identification has been generally ignored in Translation Studies, though the correlation of politics and translation has been an interest to many scholars since the late half of last century. An examination of the influence of political identification on translation of the Soviet laws in China in three periods (1917-1927, 1927-1949, and 1950s), offers a model of incorporating political identification in Translation Studies in general and in Pym's ethics of interculturality in particular. During the period of National Democratic Revolution (1917-1927), Sun Yat-sen's determination of learning from the Soviet Union brings the chance to start over and makes a beginning of translating the Soviet laws in China; the period of Revolutionary Base Areas (1927-1949) sees a large number of the Soviet laws translated and introduced in China due to the influence of the Soviet Union to the CPC and the latter's aspiration to apply the spirit of the Soviet systems in their practice; the years after the founding of PRC in 1950s witnesses a large-scale translation of the Soviet laws in China because of the new China's foreign policy of "leaning to one side" advanced by Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The analysis of the relationship between China's political identification with the old Soviet bloc and the number of published translations of the Soviet laws in China suggests a possible structural correlation: high political identification will generally result in an increase in the number of published translations in other cultures. This point of view is ignored by so many translation scholars, thus, a blind area, a lacuna, in Translation Studies. Hopefully this paper will serve as an initial step in focusing attention on this important issue, or, make more people interested in it. Of course, the link between these factors needs to be confirmed by studies of other countries.